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    Stump Kelly had been right about Eddie Donagan’s talent. He played Double A Ball for Pawtucket the following spring, and in August he was called up to the Triple A club in Louisville. His combined record with the two minor league teams in 1971 was fourteen and three. The papers began to hail him as a cinch to make the Red Sox in 1972. He was added to the forty-man roster in the winter and went to spring training with the Boston team.
    He called me collect one afternoon that March. I was in my office staring out at the gray city that was suffocating under layers of clouds, fog, and slush. Eddie was in Winter Haven, Florida.
    “They’re sending me back to Pawtucket,” he said. “What a bummer.”
    “They can do that, Eddie. You’ll be back.”
    “How the hell can they do that to me? Nobody’s hit me all spring. I shut out the Tigers for three innings day before yesterday.”
    “That’s the business you’re in. Stick to pitching. Do your stuff. You’ll make it.”
    “I’m gettin’ chilled, man. It’s bogus. A real turnoff.”
    “I can’t help you. Keep your mouth shut and throw the hell out of the ball.”
    “Yeah,” he grumbled.
    “How’s Jan?”
    “Oh, she’s okay, I guess. She doesn’t like living in a motel. The other wives chill her. I guess if I’m headed back to Pawtucket she’ll be home in a week or so.”
    “Give her my love. And Eddie?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Do your job. Pitch, don’t bitch. Okay?”
    “Sure. Ten-four.”
    “So how’s the weather down there?”
    “The weather? Oh, you know. Florida.”
    “By the way, Eddie. Spalding wants to sign you up.”
    “Yeah? Is that good?”
    “I don’t think so. They figure you’re going to make it. They try to sign minor leaguers up cheap, lock them in, so that when they do make it, it won’t cost them a bundle. I suggest you wait. There’s Wilson, Rawlings, all the rest. We can do better when you’re a big league pitcher.”
    “I don’t know, Brady. I could use some of that iron.”
    “You don’t need money now. It’s up to you. I say you should wait.”
    I heard him sigh. “Sure. You’re the lawmaster. I’ll wait.”
    “Smart decision.”
    He laughed. “See you later, Counselor.”
    The Red Sox were in the thick of a pennant race when they called Eddie Donagan up in July. Fenway Park was sold out the night he started his first game. For Eddie it was what he called a “Bogart”—a big game. “My first debut,” he said. Sam and Josie and Jan and I sat in seats Eddie got for us behind the Red Sox dugout. And Eddie pitched the same way he had that first time I watched him at Fitchburg State College, hunching his shoulders, bending like a bow, and zipping the ball with the speed and accuracy of an arrow. The fans loved him, a gangly local kid, big-shouldered and open-faced and red-headed. He pawed and scraped at the mound, cheered his fielders, chatted with the baseball, and bounded on and off the field like a boy on his way home from school for summer vacation.
    The White Sox hitters looked about as skilled as those college kids from North Adams State had looked that first time I’d seen Eddie pitch. They waved at his “yakker,” swung late at his “cheese,” and after eight innings he had a one-to-nothing lead. He had given up four singles, one walk, and, by Sam’s count, had struck out six.
    When Eddie sprinted to the mound to begin the ninth inning, the people in Fenway Park all stood and began to applaud. The sound of thirty-five thousand pairs of hands clapping for Eddie Donagan made me shiver. I glanced at Sam and saw that his eyes were shining. Eddie stood awkwardly, flipping the ball back and forth from his hand to his glove while Carlton Fisk, the catcher, pretended to adjust his shin guards. I could see Fisk grinning at Eddie’s discomfort.
    When the first Chicago batter stepped into the box the fans continued to stand and applaud. When he hit Eddie’s second pitch hard on the ground into center